[Marxism] Re Peak Oil

Les Schaffer wrote:
> the issue i have seen raised is degradation of encasing material due
> to radiation fluxes
a more up-to-date, albeit technical, study:
http://www.esc.cam.ac.uk/~kot/CaTiO3_PRB.pdf
though this is for crystalline materials. however, as a companion report
notes:
Our interest in radiation damage effects comes from the problem of
safe handling of
radioactive materials that are of no use to us, but possess enough
activity to pose a danger
to the living environment. These include highly radioactive nuclear
waste from nuclear
power stations. Its safe encapsulation is often linked to the future
of nuclear power, but
even regardless of this, the currently accumulated amount of highly
radioactive nuclear waste
is sufficiently large to present us with the problem of its safe
storage. An additional source of
radioactive materials is surplus Pu. Some of it can be reprocessed
into the mixed fuel oxide
to be burned in nuclear reactors, but the high cost of this process
and the risk of proliferation
are often used to argue against reprocessing and in favour of
encapsulation [2]. Vitrification,
or immobilization of nuclear waste in glasses, has been a
traditional method of encapsulation,
but it has been recently recognized that crystalline oxide ceramics
offer better durability and
stability as encapsulation matrices (waste forms), and several
ceramics have been proposed
for encapsulating highly radioactive nuclear waste and surplus Pu
[3–6]. A number of other
materials are being actively investigated as possible waste forms,
including TiO2, perovskite
CaTiO3, zirconolite CaZrTi2O7, zirconia ZrO2, zircon ZrSiO4,
pyrochlores Gd2Ti2O7 and
Gd2Zr2O7, APO4 monazites and other complex oxides [7–52].
Under irradiation, a waste form may experience a large sharp
percolation-type increase
of chemical transport which reduces its ability to serve as an
effective immobilization barrier.
During alpha decay, a heavy recoiling atom inflicts the most
structural damage, by creating
several thousands of permanently displaced atoms [53]. As the
radiation dose increases, the
local damaged regions connect to form a percolating cluster, which
provides a macroscopic
pathway for increased transport of chemical species. These include
radioactive isotopes which
may diffuse out in the environment [57, 58]. Because some
radioactive isotopes are long lived,
a waste form should remain an effective immobilization barrier on
the timescale of up to a
million years. In this context, the search for materials that are
resistant to amorphization by
radiation damage is currently under way.
from: http://www.esc.cam.ac.uk/~kot/review.pdf
so you can see things have come a long way since Rod's Science reports
of the 1980's. i will try to look up why these crystalline materials are
"better than" the currently-used amorphous glasses early next week in
the library.
and i'll look at Rod's nuke power numbers tmw evening.
on a personal note, this discussion motivated me to include a section on
nuclear reactions in my Modern Physics class this semester. i tip my hat
to marxists who are unafraid to look at this energy source, but i would
caution against seeing it as a panacea. the practical implementation of
a safe nuclear energy cycle will require blood sweat and tears under
capitalism and its successors.
les schaffer